A Candid Interview with Pavel & Veronica

An interview with Canadian Champions Pavel Ivanov & Veronica Baranova

[Interviewer] Hello and welcome to this Dance Beat Interview. With me I have Pavel and Veronica, 2X Canadian National Champions and top 10 at WDC World Championships. How are you guys doing today?

[Veronica] Hello, we’re doing good!

[Pavel] Hello, hello. Yes, we’re good. How are you yourself?

[Interviewer] Thank you, I’m doing well. I would like to ask you a few questions for this interview.

[Pavel] Of course, go ahead!

[Interviewer] Well, let’s start easily: how long have you been dancing together?

[Pavel] We’ve been dancing together since August 2022, so a little over 2 years now.

[Veronica] Yes, 2 years. We’ve known each other for a while and always competed against each other and 2 years ago started on our joined path…

[Interviewer] You guys are one of the most well-known Canadian dance couples. How did you build up your career over those 2 years together, and of course separately, before that?

[Veronica] Well… I will start with my career before dancing with Pavel. I started dancing when I was 5. I originally did 10 dances, so 5 ballroom dances and 5 Latin dances and was Canadian champion in Junior 2 in both programs and 10 dance world medalist. But I’ve always leaned towards Latin, so when I started dancing with Pavel I we focused in on latin.
 
[Pavel] Yeah, as for me, I’ve dropped ballroom a couple years earlier than Veronica. In my last partnership we had some good results in Canada, but I always wanted to focus on International and USA competitions, and that was exactly our focus when we started with Veronica. In terms of developing our partnership together I can say that while it’s often been tough, we’ve always stayed strong together and prioritised things we can control such as our preparation, practice, fitness, development and that has helped through periods of bad results as the focus was never on politics or things outside of our scope which I think is why oftentimes even if we don’t win a certain competition we receive lots of love and support from the audience.

[Interviewer] Thank you, that’s an interesting insight to your careers. It’s always interesting to know the process of picking ballroom or Latin for all top couples. You talked about development and preparation, how many hours go into your dancing?

[Veronica] Well, we practice almost every day unless we are traveling to or from a competition. Usually our practice is 2-3h which includes practicing basics and mechanics as well as routines and performance elements. [Pavel] Yeah, it’s hard to say an exact time frame, now we honestly just make sure we practice what we need to get done. It was definitely more excessive when we had to get our partnership off the ground, because our first competition was 2 weeks after we started dancing and our first major English competition was in 1 month…

[Interviewer] Wow, that’s really fast! I know some people take a whole 6 months just to step foot onto the competition floor…

[Veronica] Yeah… I wanted to add something from before. On top of the dance practices, we think it’s very important to include stretching and strength training in our development. As much as people say dancing is an art, and we believe in that too, dancers still need to train like athletes in order to convey our art effectively…

[Interviewer] Oh yes, I’m 100% with you on that one. You can see right away in the competition dancers that develop their bodies outside of the dance studio. Moving on, other than competing, you’ve also inspired and taught many successful Canadian dancers in the younger age categories. Talk us through a little bit about what goes into being a good coach and bringing the best out of your students…

[Veronica] Yes, we’re very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish with our students, being able to bring up Canadian Champions ourselves… I think that to be a good coach, it’s very important to love what you do and to believe in your students. They can’t believe in themselves if their teacher doesn’t believe in them, and they can tell. But obviously, you still need to be very strict and demanding.

[Pavel] Yeah, and people from other studios have also noticed the work we do in terms of training as we had the honor to help develop Canadian dancing more being invited to teach in studios in Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto and other parts of Canada. I definitely agree with Veronica about believing in your students. For me, I’m very competitive and I hold myself accountable for my students the same way I do about my own results so I’m very stubborn when I teach.

[Interviewer] It has come to our attention that you’ve been competing and training in the USA more and more over the past 4-6 months… What’s that about?

[Pavel] Yes we definitely have increased our focus. As I said before, when I started dancing with Veronica, USA competitions were right away a big part of our focus, but we did ramp up recently even more. The main thing is just that USA has a bigger dance industry with more opportunities for growth and more challenges for us.

[Veronica] Yeah we used to drive in, dance, and drive out, a one day thing, but recently we’ve been staying longer for lessons with Aigars Stolcers and Agita Baranovska.

[Interviewer] Aigars and Agita sure develop some good couples. You’ve recently come back from the World Championships in Assen, Netherlands….how did it go?

[Veronica] It went pretty good actually, we kind of hit a plateau in our international results a little while ago, so it was a good feeling making the semi-finals and placing 10th in the world.

[Pavel] Yeah, that was in the Under 21, but we’ve also had a great result in the amateur, just a couple recalls away from the semi-final, placing 14th. I think our American training as well as competition experience, definitely helped us to prepare. Previously, when we mainly competed in Canada, very rarely was it that we had to dance a first round or a top 24, but in the USA, it’s every comp and it’s definitely a different criteria for dancing those compared to a straight top 6 final.

[Interviewer] That’s great to hear. How did you guys celebrate it? Did you guys get a chance to be tourists in the Netherlands a bit?

[Veronica] Last year we got a chance to walk around Amsterdam a bit because we missed our flight, but this year we did schedule one extra day in our trip, and we walked around Utretch with my family friends that live there.

[Pavel] Well, yeah. We spent an extra day, but usually not much more than that. And once we came back it was straight back to practice and we had another competition the next weekend. We don’t usually like to take a lot of time off after competitions like that because we feel that they actually give us momentum to continue and improve. We always learn a lot from major competitions. I know some people like to take big breaks after those, and train in season for big competitions or series of big national events, but we try to stay top of our game year round.

[Veronica] Also, we don’t like to think “small comp,” “big comp” or like, “important comp.” Every competition is a chance to improve and gain experience. Or see from videos how our recent efforts in the studio look on the floor.

[Interviewer] Are you guys dating? How is it balancing your dance partnership as well as the romantic side of your relationship?

[Pavel] Oh… Good question. I mean it’s not uncommon in the dance world, but it is definitely a hard subject. We usually try to keep problems or arguments with either part of the relationship separate to one another, like in the studio we are dance partners, and outside the studio we are boyfriend and girlfriend, but it definitely is not always like that. I mean dating can help your performance and connection, but can also make it more difficult to practice at times…

[Veronica] Yeah, I agree that both should be separate but that doesn’t always happen. I think there should be a certain level of respect in both relationship and partnership for it to work – like my boyfriend is my best friend but also for the partnership to work you have to be pretty close and have the same opinions about some things for it to work. Also to me, most dance partnerships are closer to a married relationship than some real couples…I mean our partners see us at our best, worst and in every stage of life.

[Intreviewer] Ok, well, it was a great chat! Thank you guys so much for coming out and doing this. We really appreciate it!